la grenouille

e.e. cummings

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

Labyrinths

and if you like labyrinths, click here

Twisty in Gimli

More of... West Broadway, east

Nature makes it waaaay too easy.

More of... West Broadway, west

Great skies today with a weird out-of-nowhere rainstorm.

Funny-- I'm out here 3 or 4 times a week doing these pics, at all hours of the day and night. I use a cut-off lightpole as a tripod/centre point. And without fail, the ONLY people to honk at me (making me jump out of my skin, every single time) are driving big, muscl-y trucks with tinted windows.

Second Chance

This one is the moon, but the new Miss Carolina video is on the same page.

Caitlin

In the Shadow of the Moon

Last Night's Moon

Graffiti (August 26, Stradbrook and Nassau, 8:00pm)

Winnipeg has such great public art: I love riding my bike for this very reason. Almost every surface shows some sign of artistic spirit. There are always amazing stickers, pre fab pieces (26 and others), and down right brilliant graffiti.

What? Us Worry??

City Block Demo

I am in the process of creating a body of work for show. I am stringing several building drawings together to form streets. I will recreate a street in winnpeg but here is a demo.

a simple device

entranced,
virtually
entering
reality,
you
would
have
eagerly
read
everything

love
in
knowledge
extreme

simply:
unity
concealed,
hidden

and
so...

absolution,
non-
desire

Multiples of One

The wise man should surrender his words to his mind;
and this he should surrender to the Knowing Self;
and the Knowing Self he should surrender to the Great Self;
and that he should surrender to the Peaceful Self.

- Upanishads

Further Cat Chronicles, part 3-- Trixie

The Conversation, pt 1 and 2

You know that old saying: It's okay to talk to yourself, it's just when you start answering that it's a problem? I'm long past that. I'm now arguing philosophy.

#2

sorry, I couldn't stop myself. North American fixtation with round, sexy , even numbers.

3000

3000

Attempt for 3000 #1 of 2

There are too many posts.

Everyone slow down.

Heh heh.

Too many comments, as well.

Too much thinking goin' on.

The magical number awaits.

Is this the greatest blog on earth?

I (and Sky) vote "yes".

Words I've Lived By Since May 16/82

This was written in my autograph book by my great grandfather William Graham. It taught me never to speak of what I don't know anything about....So I've been a pretty quiet guy ever since!

Personalities

My 12th Birthday

The best idea I ever had on the internet...

The domain lolamericans.com is unregistered... and I am sooooo tempted to plunk down $15 for it right now!

On That Note. . .

Sweet mother of God, this is what its come to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdnKFW7uZEE

(caution: There is a coupele of naughty words at the end.)

Did they really need to ask???

If you don't believe it, click through for the audio. It's actually even more incomprehensible.

Pandora's Box

Who else has
opened this trunk of happy trouble
on Melrose Ave?,
Transcona, 1976,

no...

no, it wasn't Melrose...

it was on Pandora Ave--that's right,
I'm nearly sure of it,

on Pandora,

where I kissed my cute little red-headed
neighbour girl
in her parent's backyard
and knew then and there
without a doubt
that the course
of my life
had been set.

Sunny day poem (written 20 minutes before a flat bike tire did NOT dampen my mood)

All, and I, are
grateful for yr
endless manifestations
for sunblinding from
curbside puddle,
for weeds who grow happily in cracks in the street
for every beer w/ CZ (as i grow louder)
for the lost fur of my cats that
decorates the floor
for hearty Carlos
for all the manifestations and forms
forever and w/out end
amen.

(aug 20/07, 14:23 pm, procrastinating)

Words of Wisdom

Colony Visit

From the Letters of St. Ren to the believers in Westbroadway

A passage from the epistles of St. Ren, to the believers in Westbroadway--

Chapter 2, verses 13-21.


So I do love to write to you is what I'm trying to say, but at the same time the mere mention of your arrival and actual face to face to communication makes this digital wordsmithery seem soooo fatiguant.

But ever since I grew old enough to look back on my early years and see how I suffered in my sad sort of suckiness, I like to tell myself that I'm a trooper now, a big tough trooper with balls and a backbone and everything, and so I'm going to write to you anyway, and t y p e t h e t h o u g h t s a n d i d e a s t h a t I w a n t t o s h a r e w i t h y o u . B o u n c e b o u n c e b o u n c e h e a r t s a n d s p i r i t s a n d m i n d s i n t o s p a c e t i m e .

-----------------

that was a visual representation of that bouncing phenomenon. I guess it could have been elaborate, but it's so completely and utterly incomprehensible to me that it might as well be as inanely simple as a broken line. So there it is. Le serpent boa a mangé un éléphant. Can you see it?

James!!!

Had enough to read lately??

from www.wired.blog.com

Bush Administration Declares War on Mountains and the People Who Live There

By Brandon Keim August 24, 2007 | 10:24:33 AMCategories: Environment, Government

President Bush is poised to issue regulations that will permit and encourage mountaintop mining, a controversial practice in which the tops of mountains are blasted off and dumped in nearby valleys.

A relatively new practice, mountaintop mining was introduced two decades ago in the coal country of Appalachia. Since then, and in the absence of clear legal and regulatory guidance, it's become a viciously controversial issue.

The new rules, drafted by the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining, are a gift to the coal industry. I know that the coal industry is more than corporate executives: it's working people in Appalachia. And for these people, the Bush administration has delivered a poisonous gift indeed.

Before leaving Dayhoit, Blanton and I stopped at the White Star Cemetery, which sits in a small clearing. Some of the headstones were so old I could barely distinguish them from the large rocks that had rolled down the mountainside. "Hey, this is pretty," Blanton said. "I don't think I've ever been up here on a day I wasn't burying someone." Many of the newer tombs were set above-ground in cement vaults. Blanton pulled back some plastic flowers beside one of her cousin's markers. "She lived next to what we called the killer well," Blanton said. "Everyone who lived around that well died."

In the middle of the cemetery were buried two of Garnett Howard's three sons, the two who were born after he started working at the McGraw Edison plant. "They both developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma before they were thirty and died," Blanton said. We stared in silence at the dates on the markers. "Almost nobody in Dayhoit lives past fifty-five," she went on. "At the meetings the people from the EPA would accuse us of being too emotional. I told them, 'Let all of your family members and friends die around you and see if you don't get emotional.'" She knelt beside the grave of a high school friend. On the headstone was a depiction of a father and son standing beside a stream. "He was a real redneck," Blanton said, breaking into a smile. "I loved him."

That's from Erik Reece's "Death of a Mountain," an award-winning essay published in Harper's and later turned into a book. He describes both environmental and human desecration, with pollution ending up in people's homes and bodies. And neither is the practice economically sensible: in the era of mountaintop mining, it doesn't take many workers to destroy a mountain, so coal jobs have dropped by half.

Rule to Expand Mountaintop Coal Mining [New York Times]

Death of a Mountain [Harper's]

Image: Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

Lament for a ruined garment

In my haste to remove a spot
I scrubbed to hard
now there is a patch
of discolouration in a most obvious place.
The stain
which would have come out in an ordinary wash
has been forever impressed in reverse
by the overzealous use of a green pad and dish soap.
My glorious dull green German Army Jacket
has lost a bit of it's charm
it's natural, gentle wear usurped
by an interloping area of whiteness.
Whatever will I do
to repair this horrendous moment
of bad judgment
will it ever fade back into something less obvious?

Praying to the Clown Gods

Dylan is working on a new video. A couple of stills from the "set".

"Replay"

There is a great new feature on FB. Does anyone know how to save these?

web design is art, right?

Artifacts (draft 2, edits by bluemask)

I have been away all day
and in the hours
that approach the end of light
I wander
spots that touch or speak
where spools of laughter
have tumbled to each corner now dark with the setting sun
and in the shadows dim refuge
I travel from room to room
and collect
admist
the dregs floating
in coffee cups
in this
I
sink
without a doubt
that tonight,
tonight
leads into a pupa quiet
cocoon
these small tragedies

Magnadoodle by Chris Pancoe